- New Characters
- New Skills
- Many new environments
- Weapons, all those delicious weapons.
- A 'deliciously crafted' story.
- Players will reveal secrets, and escalate mysteries of the Borderlands universe as they adventure across the unexplored new areas of Pandora.
- The original cast are now NPCs
- Claptrap is back!
- Currency is now 'Eridium'
- Weapons are being overhauled.
- NPCs are planned to interact with eachother and generally be more alive.

The reveal of Borderlands 2 and their first new character will be in the latest issue of Game Informer Magazine.

- 5 years since the first Borderlands.
- Some jackass named Handsome Pete has taken the credit and glory for opening the vault. He later rose to power as the CEO for Hyperion and the dictator of Pandora.
- The four Vault Hunters from the first game will have their story and backstory fleshed out more. They will also be scattered around the planet since they seem to have gone their separate ways (and they still have a bounty on their heads).
- The Gunzerker is basically an upgraded version of the Beserker.
- The AI and enemies will communicate to each other, thus changing up the tactics a bit.
- Uncovering new locations will grant XP.
- Quests will radically change due to gameplay.
- A bandit faction called the Bloodletters (or something like that) are gun nuts. They even have a statue of Marcus.
- A new vehicle called the Bandit Technical. Gearbox wanted vehicles that doesn't suck, so they set out to improve on the textures, seating for co-op, and better collision detection.
- Shitload of new awesome enemies.
- Skags are much more dangerous this time around. An elemental skag can power-up a bunch of pup skags by using its power.
- Class mods and elemental damage will have more distinct experiences.
- Day/Night transition, but now Pandora's moon has been blocked by a huge H (that stands for Hyperion).
- Class skill trees will be more than just simple stat changes.
- A new element is called Eridium that is found on some weapons. While it adds on no attack value, it does augments other elemental damage. Besides enhancing guns, its strange alien property is supposedly a super currency on Pandora.
- Claptrap is coming back and he's still pissed about Hyperion. How he's going to deal with it is going to be way different than your plans.
- Gun brands will be much more noticeable by having a theme and a unique visual style.
- A throwable Tediore gun that acts like a grenade. The gun will respawn in the player's hand with a new magazine. The more bullets left remaining in the magazine, the bigger the explosion.
- Banter with player characters (ala. L4D and Dragon Age)

Borderlands 2 is also appearing at PAX Prime and Gamescom.

Where are the Screenshots? :(

The character featured in these screenshots is known as the Gunzerker. I'll make a classes subtitle once the second is revealed.

For now, magazine scans from the thread contributors.

Given that I obtained a new found love for this game last summer when I decided to play it on a new character co-op with a friend, I proceeded to buy ALL the DLC after that and beat every single one. I love Borderlands and I can't wait for this either.

Oh, and:

2kGames posted:

Next Friday, August 19th, 2K Games will be broadcasting LIVE from GamesCom as Gearbox Software presents a demonstration of Borderlands 2 and answers questions from our fans! The world premier online look at our much-anticipated return to Pandora will be broadcast on our uStream channel at http://www.ustream.tv/2kgameslive at 8:00 PT (17:00 CET, 16:00 BST)

It seems like we're at least getting miniguns, I hope we get grenade launchers too, you could make them by modding the first game but they blocked it, I had great times creating sticky launchers and giving them to random people online

My guess is that he's talking about some sort of accessories similar to the Class Mods. In the first Borderlands we've got the weapons slots, the Shield slot, the Grenade Mod slot, and the COM (Class Mod) slot. I guess that most would feel that's kind of enough player modification, but if you look at other action RPG-style games like Diablo and Elder Scrolls there are MANY slots that you put accessories in, like slots for Gloves, Boots, Helmets, etc, basically the equipment-based Armour system present in many video games. Even STALKER had the Artifact Belt where you put the weird thingimajigs the Zone spits out every now and again.

Whether or not Borderlands would work well with wearing multiple Accessories or stat-altering Artifacts is not a question I have the answer to, although it would allow for more customisation.

Also, would using Artifacts to augment certain skills other than the Action Skill be viable? And on that subject, would multiple Action Skills for a character be cool or overpowered?